Oh, Lindsey Graham, he is one of our favorites! The South Carolina Senator has, for weeks, cast himself as one of the stimulus package's most fervent opponents. This time last week, he and John McCain were in the well of the Senate, performing a grand duetto buffo di due gatti against the stimulus, and when the media metanarrative required that someone take a ream of paper and wave it around in the air with dramatic flair, Graham was only too happy to accommodate.
Ah, but now the bill's passage draws nigh, and lest you think he was going to school us all by allowing South Carolina to become a laboratory for whatever the hell economic plan he thought would work better, guess again. Graham will take the dollars, thank you, even if he's not convinced it will be of any good! Or so he told Wolf Blitzer:
BLITZER: South Carolina will get money out of this bill.
GRAHAM: Yes.
BLITZER: Should South Carolina take the money?
GRAHAM: I think that, yes, from my point of view, I -- you don't want to be crazy here. I mean, if there's going to be money on the table that will help my state, but I've got a job to do up here, and that is to try to help people and not damn the next generation. We had a $415 billion package to help people who have lost their jobs, that cut taxes, that create new jobs. We've got a spending bill, not a job creation bill. And we're being all things to all people.
Shucks, Lindsey, if you don't think it'll do South Carolina any good, by all means, don't take it!